Patricia Pugas: “Racial diversity has always been present within Magazine Luiza’s culture”

Leaders League: Magazine Luiza was recently ranked 1st in the Great Place to Work institute’s list of the best companies to work for in Brazil. With over 47,000 professionals in the company today, which of the company’s human resources practices most contributed to this achievement?

Patricia Pugas: We were delighted to be recognized for our good practices in people management. We have a saying, "we are people who like people", and that goes both for clients and the company’s corporate culture. At Magalu, we invest in our talent, we extract the best that a professional has to offer, in addition to believing in sharing experiences and in the power of teamwork. Although Magalu has always been well ranked in the GPTW rankings, we believe that the pandemic transformed work relationships and models, and this has made a major difference to the way the company has been perceived over the past year. Technological advances which, perhaps, would have otherwise taken another three to five years to take place, were implemented virtually overnight. At first our experiment was hit-and-miss, but what we learned was very positive and the benefits which a hybrid labor model brings are permanent. The main benefit is connecting, once and for all, people regardless of where they are located and reinforcing the feeling of belonging, even for those professionals who may be physically afar from the workplace. The key pillar behind this strategy is respecting people’s health, regardless of if they work in a physical store, a distribution center, or a new startup integrated to our team.

Magazine Luiza offers technological development programs, such as Desenvolve 40+, to train people over 40 in technology and programming, and Luiza <Code>, which is exclusively for women. What are the main goals of these initiatives? And how do they fit into the company's wider strategy?

Both programs reflect Magalu's institutional purpose, which is to share with the many the privileges of the few. Luiza <Code> is a free training course in software development that seeks to balance the innovation ecosystem from a gender perspective, offering a safe environment so that women may work and develop in the technology sector, which remains predominantly male-dominated. Our first three editions have already trained a total of 300 women. Amongst these candidates we had, for instance, women that migrated from technical fields, such as chemistry as well as the commercial sphere, to assume this new role of being a programmer. We also had many candidates who were unemployed before the training began and who were able to reinsert themselves in the labor market once the course was concluded.

Technological advances, which would have otherwise taken another three to five years, were implemented virtually overnight

In November last year, we launched a new technology training program, Desenvolve 40+. The project, a partnership with the Let's Code programming school, offers 100 technology training scholarships to learn Python coding for people over 40, with 50% of scholarships reserved for people self-declared black or pardo, in addition to being open to the company's in-house staff. This initiative’s goal is to spawn generational inclusion at Luizalabs – our technology division – by training programmers in a sector that suffers from a shortage of qualified professionals and, additionally, retraining professionals over 40, who have been affected by the challenging labor market. At Luizalabs, only 14.2% of our professionals are 40 or older. With this course, the company has taken yet another step towards a more diverse and inclusive working environment.

In 2020, Magazine Luiza famously launched a trainee program with exclusive vacancies for black professionals — an initiative maintained in 2021. What can you tell us about this initiative and its impact within the company?

The banner of racial diversity has always been present within Magalu’s culture and this concern was not born with the trailblazing launch of our first Trainee Program Exclusively for People of Color. However, by late 2019, we had performed extensive research on diversity and inclusion with our staff to better understand where we stood. It wasn’t a census, but more of a survey with a significant number of employees, which allowed us to estimate that 53% of our staff is black. In other words, we mirrored Brazil’s demographics, yet only 16% of these professionals held leadership positions. For Magalu, a company which emphasizes the strategic value of diversity for business, it was unthinkable to ignore this issue. And it became clear to us that we had a problem. For months we reflected on how we could start tackling the problem. We discussed the subject with jurists, NGOs that work with racial equity initiatives, and representatives of the Public Labor Ministry. Internally, we also debated the subject extensively with our black employees and former trainees.

We reached the conclusion that our trainee program in 2020 should exclusively feature black candidates. We were never under the illusion that we could correct a historical fault with one initiative, or that it should be seen as a model for other companies. It was merely a decision that, aligned with our own values and purpose, sought to correct a distortion that affects the company's competitiveness. The selection process then became 100% focused on hiring black professionals, this being the main criteria to sign up to our talent pool. The 19 successful candidates, among more than 22 thousand applications, participated in the trainee program over the past year. By the end of the training, they were promoted to senior analyst positions and chose to exercise their roles in the corporate fields for which they had the greatest affinity. For the second edition of our trainee program, which began in January, we repeated this process and completely focused on hiring black and pardo talents, and duly received another 11 trainees for the class of 2022.

51.8% of Magalu employees self-identify as black or pardo, of which 41.5% occupy leadership positions, according to our census conducted in September 2021

Today at Magalu, 51.8% of employees self-identify as black or pardo, of which 41.5% occupy leadership positions, according to our census conducted in September 2021. If we only consider corporate leadership positions, the share of black employees stands at 21%. Our target is to continually improve these figures, step by step, year by year. This is already deeply rooted in our culture, and our diversity initiatives are monitored by our affinity groups (people with disabilities, the LGBTQIA+ community, black individuals and women).

As we enter the third year of the pandemic many professionals will continue to work from home. What are the challenges of maintaining a strong corporate culture during these times of social distancing? What has been Magazine Luiza's experience in this sense?

Just as Magalu was one of the first companies to shut down its locations, at the start of the pandemic, placing the lives and health of our staff before any other interest, it was also one of the first to anticipate the return to on-site work. Throughout the entire Covid-19 pandemic, we searched for ways to strengthen our bonds and corporate culture, and also to transfer them to the digital environment. We hold our ‘Weekly Sessions’ virtually, which features all of our training processes, including our "Breakfast with the President" which consist of exchanges with Luiza Helena Trajano.

All of these corporate cultural practices, which are the great strength of the company and which were previously held in-person, have been adapted to the virtual environment and we now realize that this has improved the dissemination of these values. What we’ve lost in terms of face-to-face interactions, we have gained in reach, and today we can impact more people faster than ever.

By: Danilo Motta